New police station plan presented in York

Friday

Feb 21, 2014 at 2:00 AM

YORK, Maine — The Planning Board saw a new plan for a police station and connector road on Thursday, but initial discussion centered on what has gone wrong with the project in the past and the board's role in fixing those problems in the future.

Susan Morse

YORK, Maine — The Planning Board saw a new plan for a police station and connector road on Thursday, but initial discussion centered on what has gone wrong with the project in the past and the board's role in fixing those problems in the future.

The town has been working to remedy outstanding federal and state violations for over-cutting and placing debris in a vernal pool buffer, issues that derailed the police station project in the fall of 2012.

Board member Peter Smith said he did not believe it was the Planning Board's role to enforce violation issues. That is a responsibility of the Code Enforcement Office, he said.

Board members questioned whether the violations needed to be fixed prior to the Planning Board reviewing the new project.

Engineer Andrew Johnston, of the firm SMRT, the architect for the police station project, said the best way to remove rock stockpiled in the wet area was to crush it and use it on the proposed new road. Otherwise, it could cost the town hundreds of thousands of dollars to move the rock, he said.

Board members also wanted to know who was overseeing the project for the town.

"Who has the responsibility?" asked board member Lew Stowe.

Town Manager Rob Yandow said near the end of the meeting that Johnston, who presented the plans Thursday, was the project representative.

Stowe had said earlier the board had a lot of questions that went beyond Johnston's responsibility, as the engineer had said larger issues of land swaps and property lines were not his field.

There is a current boundary line dispute with abutter York's Wild Kingdom.

The new police station plan is similar to one approved by the Planning Board in 2012.

Johnston presented the station footprint off of Ridge Road and the road layout from Ridge Road to Route 1 as a sketch plan only, meaning he was asking for feedback prior to presenting the project for formal approval.

The next time the project goes before the Planning Board, it is expected to be a formal request for preliminary approval, according to Lee Jay Feldman, director of planning for the Southern Maine Planning and Development Commission. Feldman and Stephen Bradstreet of Ransom Consulting Inc. are advising the board on the project, filling in for Town Planner Christine Grimando so as not to have a town employee reviewing a town project.

No date was set for the next Planning Board meeting. A site visit is expected to be scheduled prior to formal review.

Johnston did not present a design for the police station, but said it was planned as an 18,000-square-foot, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) silver-certified building with a geothermal heat cooling system and 76 parking spaces. The building is oriented for maximum solar gain should solar panels be placed on the roof. The panels are not currently in the design, Johnston said. A 140-foot cell tower is proposed for the site.

Unlike the last time the plan was put forward, the police station and road are being presented as one project, rather than separately.

Stowe said it was the road that would be the issue.

Voters in 2011 approved $6.8 million for the station and another $1.6 million for the road. Johnston said $2 million has been spent on the project to date, leaving $6.4 million in the budget.

The Planning Board approved the station and gave preliminary approval for the road during the summer of 2012, but in October of that year, rescinded both due to the environmental violations.

Construction has since been on hold.

"This is still a beneficial project to the town and needed by the police department," Johnson said.

The York Police Department currently operates out of a turn-of-the-last-century schoolhouse.

All who spoke Thursday agree a new police station is needed.

An estimated half-dozen people attended. Most were town officials.

Board of Selectman member Torbert Macdonald, who said he was speaking for himself and not for the board, said as much as the project is brand new, old issues needed to be addressed to ensure the legitimacy of the process.

For instance, he said 4 acres of trees were cleared and grubbed behind the Blinn House, a property bought by the town for police station land. Macdonald indicated this was done to get it ready for commercial development, while abutting neighbors woke up one morning to a cleared site.

Macdonald, and Board of Selectmen Chairman Ron Nowell, were the two dissenting votes on the board in a recent 3-2 decision to move the police project forward.

Glen MacWilliams, a former Planning Board member who did not serve during the last police station debate, also said the issue was a failure of the process.

"Boundary and land agreements must be resolved," he said.

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